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Ellimist
The Ellimist is a fictional character from the science fiction novel series Animorphs. The Ellimist is an almost god-like being, displaying many reality warping powers, though it is stated several times that while he appears to be, he is not omnipotent. By standard values, the Ellimist is a force of good and his foe Crayak is a force of evil. The Ellimist's backstory is detailed in The Ellimist Chronicles. He frequently interferes in the Animorphs' lives, so as to help defeat Crayak. The Ellimist also uses the Animorphs' Chee friend, Erek King, in his endeavors. When he appears to the Animorphs, he tends to take the form of an old male humanoid with glowing blue skin, similar to the typical wizard or wiseman archetype; in this form he can communicate normally. He sometimes also appears to them as a normal human male, which is also how he appeared to Elfangor at one point. Elfangor saw his true form, "an indescribable being of light and time and space," in The Andalite Chronicles. Before achieving through abnormal circumstances an almost god-like omnipotence and omnipresence, the Ellimist was originally a Ketran named Toomin. (On a sidenote, it is later revealed in this book that the Ketran had no concept of music.) Toomin could be best described as an average if not mediocre gamer. He frequently played a life simulation game—very popular among his people—which featured two species and gave the player the task of minutely modifying environmental and evolutionary aspects of the species and their planet, as to cause change over time. The game often resulted in the extinction of another, less-evolved species. His game name was "the Ellimist". Another society of Ketrans on his planet made the mistake of broadcasting transmissions of the game into deep space, as part of an experiment with radio transmission. Unfortunately, they did not bother to include an explanation that the transmission were only games, and a race called the Capasin annihilated the Ketrans, believing that the Ketrans meddled with the development of other species. Toomin escaped on an experimental spacecraft with the last of his species. These last Ketrans roamed throughout the galaxy, searching for a new homeworld. Toomin eventually became the de facto leader of the ship's crew. Ketrans are approximately the size of humans, but are adapted for flight in a thick atmosphere and low gravity, and this made their search for a suitable home very difficult. Some of the last Ketrans favored a plan of re-engineering themselves, so that their children would be born adapted for life on the surface of a higher-gravity planet, but this created controversy among many. The Ketrans eventually came to a moon covered almost entirely with water, which they believed could have been favourable save for some vital characteristics that needed to be discerned. As they came close to the surface of the water in an effort to probe the moon, their craft was seized by the tentacle of a creature whose tentacled body covered the entire surface of the moon. It pulled the ship into the water, and there were no survivors save for Toomin. The tentacled creature called itself "Father", and was at its core a huge parasitic sponge. However, it had the ability to access through its tentacles the brain matter of dead creatures, and use them itself. It therefore had the combined knowledge of every creature that had ever crashed onto the moon; the other members of the crew, although dead, still existed in the form of the data left on their brains. Toomin would interact with them metaphysically, knowing fully well that they were only shadows and that his friends and his beloved Aguella were actually dead. However, while the brains of the dead augmented its knowledge, it had limited creativity—Father was indeed a sponge. Father kept Toomin alive as an ever refreshing source of creativity, and interfaced with his brain to converse and play games with him—Father was lonely, and Toomin became its only friend. At first, Toomin lost every game he played with Father, as Father had perhaps countless of creatures' knowledge and memories to draw upon. Eventually, however, Toomin discovered the advantage he had over Father: his superior creativity or that is, the capacity to love. This allowed Toomin to best Father at every game they played, and eventually, to do to Father what Father had done to so many others: Toomin took over the brain of Father. Toomin found the wreckage of all the crashed spacecrafts on the moon where it had been kept by Father, and used his now boundless knowledge and insight to build a spacecraft, integrated with his body, many times more advanced than any before or since; he experimented with spreading his existence across multiple ships, becoming thus unbound. While he pleaded Father to let him die during his existence with it, after conquering it he decided that instead of choosing death he would choose life and thus purpose: by taking the name of the Ellimist, he vowed that the genocide of the Ketrans would never again be repeated while he was there to stop it. The Ellimist journeyed through the galaxy, ending wars with the vast power of his spacecraft-body, fostering peace, and essentially taking on the role of a deity for many of the planets he visited. Eventually, the Ellimist met Crayak, a seemingly irrational being who aimed to bring tyranny and death to the universe as a form of entertainment, and recreate it under its own perspective. When they met, the Ellimist could not comprehend what Crayak had done to many innocent planets in the galaxy—the Ellimist was aghast by Crayak's principle of life. They battled for centuries, using vast technological powers in their attempts to destroy each other. In the process, they annihilated hundreds of worlds. Losing motivation to continue fighting the Crayak, the Ellimist temporarily retreated to the Andalite home planet. He copied his conscience and a limited and purified part of his knowledge to an Andalite body he created by thus effectively splitting his existence into two; a process which on the whole was to him humanizing and joyful after having had to confront the Crayak. He was lonely, dehumanized, and sought love and companionship. The Andalites at the time were not an advanced civilization but a primitive collection of tribes. He lived as an Andalite and started a family. By living on the planet, the Ellimist learned that the key of survival was to create as many offspring as possible; although so many die, with repeated efforts life could multiply faster than the Crayak could wipe them out. With a renewed vigor, the Ellimist fought the Crayak, creating the Pemalites, creators of the Chee, who spread quickly throughout the galaxy (until they were destroyed by Crayak's own creations, the Howlers). In a final move, Crayak attacked the Ellimist, forcing him into a black hole. Instead of dying, the Ellimist became one with the fabric of space and time, transforming thus from a technological semi-deity into a metaphysical one. Moving a planet that Crayak was about to destroy, believed to be Earth dozens of millions of years before the present time, half a year in its rotation, he was able to save it. In the meantime, however, Crayak too had managed to somehow find a way into the fabric of space and time. They start conversing, and agree that fighting directly would prove to be mutually destructive, as it would cause immense damage to the fabric and likely destroy them both in the process. The Ellimist suggests that they could become passive observers and watch life unfold and evolve, but the Crayak replies that he would rather choose his own destruction over that. The Ellimist then invites him to join him in the final game, where they would pursue their own battle indirectly by using sentient beings as gamepieces, and the Crayak agrees. The Ellimist created the Time Matrix, according to Andalite mythology (in The Andalite Chronicles, the Ellimist informs Elfangor that he indeed created the Time Matrix), which was essentially a time machine; however, The Ellimist Chronicles does not mention the Matrix at any point in the story. The Matrix was buried (on Earth, no less) by Elfangor. Connection to the Animorphs First appearing in [[The Stranger (Animorphs)|#7: The Stranger]], the Ellimist—without explaining about Crayak or their game—offers the Animorphs a chance to save a remnant of humanity. The Ellimist claims that he cannot interfere in the Yeerk invasion, but that he can bring some humans—as well as animals, human accomplishments, etc.—to a kind of "wildlife preserve" much like Earth, thus allowing a portion of humanity to survive. He also shows them a future where Earth is completely conquered, and all the Animorphs dead or Controllers; Rachel's Yeerk is apparently on good terms with Visser Three—now promoted to Visser One—and Tobias was killed and eaten after the others were infested. This, however, was a ploy that allowed the Animorphs to find out information they needed to destroy the Kandrona; by "breaking his own rules"—in the form of allowing the Animorphs to discover the location of the Kandrona in their present by witnessing its presence in the future-, the Ellimist helped to deal a major blow to the Yeerks. (It was also hinted that this timeline was actually an alternate future rather than an actual future for the Animorphs' true timeline, as Rachel's Yeerk is confused by the presence of Ax and refers to six humans coming into the future, suggesting that she is from an alternate timeline where Ax was never rescued and/or another person was with the main Animorphs when they walked through the construction site.) The Ellimist appeared again to Tobias in ''The Change'', and again, explained his desire to save a species from destruction—in this case, he had arranged to free a pair of Hork-Bajir-Controllers (Jara Hamee and Ket Halpak), and Tobias aids the alien pair in setting up a home that eventually becomes the Free Hork-Bajir colony. The Ellimist rewards Tobias by granting him a wish. Tobias does not truly make a wish, but tells the Ellimist that "you know what I want". Tobias, expecting to be made human again, is simply given his morphing powers back, as well as the ability to morph into his human body (the Ellimist sends him back in time to acquire his past self prior to the trip through the construction site). This shows that what Tobias truly wants, is to retain the independence he has as a hawk, while still being able to help his friends in a fight. In The Attack, the Ellimist finally reveals the truth about Crayak to the Animorphs, and uses them to help save a race called the Iskoort from Crayak's Howlers. He makes an interesting comment in this book—that, when Crayak first saw Jake in [[The Capture (Animorphs)|#6: The Capture]], Crayak had seen that the Ellimist "had touched" Jake. As the Ellimist didn't appear until book 7, this implies (and Applegate confirmed on the Animorph website) that the Ellimist had "known" Jake before this point. The eventual meaning of this comes out in Megamorphs #4: Back to Before, where Jake—tempted by Crayak's servant, Drode—wishes that the Animorphs had never found Elfangor, thus never acquired the morphing powers. This new reality, however—which was supposed to give the Yeerks an easy victory—broke down, as Cassie was able to tell that the world was not as it should be, driving the Animorphs—even when only human—on a course of action that culminated in Jake and Ax stealing a Blade ship and using it to destroy the Yeerk Pool while Cassie killed Visser Three with a Dracon beam. Here the Drode reveals (in the form of complaining) that the Animorphs were, in fact, not a random assortment who had found Elfangor but that they had been picked out by the Ellimist: Elfangor's son Tobias, his brother Aximili, Cassie—a kind of 'nexus point' who by her very nature would disrupt any attempt to replace the true reality with an alternate one-, and the son of Visser One's host body (Marco)—as he put it, the Ellimist had "stacked the deck" with them for their specific abilities and positions. The Ellimist did not admit this to be true but said that if it was, it would have been "very clever" of him. Any alternate timeline would collapse due to their specific involvement with the fight against the Yeerks. The Ellimist had also meddled with the past, and caused Elfangor to go from being a human on Earth to an Andalite war-prince; this change was made in the timeline while allowing Tobias to continue to exist, thus preserving the Ellimist's plans. The Ellimist makes his final appearance in the last Animorph book, The Beginning. There he appears to honor the dying Rachel, where he tells her the story written in The Ellimist Chronicles. He also tells her that she was a random choice to join the team but that her life mattered greatly to the fate of the world. External links * Category:Animorphs characters Category:Fictional extraterrestrial characters Category:Fictional deities Category:Fictional portrayals of God Category:Fictional characters introduced in 1997